MGM has blockbuster design team for $5 billion project
MGM Mirage officials have assembled a who's-who list of architects for its $5 billion CityCenter project that the company hopes not only transforms the Strip into an urban hub but sets a new international design standard.
Names like Rafael Vinoly, Norman Foster, James KM Cheng and Cesar Pelli, the architect behind the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, will handle the design elements of the massive project, which includes a 60-story, 4,000-room hotel-casino, two boutique hotels and 1,640 luxury condos.
MGM Mirage chairman Terry Lanni and other company executives envision the Strip evolving into a Park Avenue one day, where people live and work and not just gamble and leave. The CityCenter is a must if Las Vegas wants to continue attracting visitors, Lanni said.
"You bring excitement and you bring people," Lanni said in an interview Wednesday. "If you just end up building more rooms, that's bad for Las Vegas. Once again, it will be a reason to come to Las Vegas. If it isn't, it will be a failure."
To achieve its vision, the world's second-largest gambling with annual revenues of more than $7 billion has brought together some of the most prominent architects and designers. The team was scheduled to be announced at a Thursday news conference.
Lanni described the group as the top picks in their field.
"It's like the NFL draft, and we got the first 10 choices," he said.
Vinoly handled such projects as the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
Pelli will be the lead architect on the hotel-casino and Vinoly will design another tower consisting of condo-hotel units. Cheng is known for his residential towers in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Foster, a winner of the prestigious Pritzker architecture prize, also will have a hand in the 18 million-square-foot CityCenter. He'll design one of five towers that will dwarf the neighboring Bellagio resort, a 3.6 million-square-foot property also owned by MGM Mirage.
Company officials say CityCenter is the largest privately financed development in the country.
The project is expected to open in late 2009 and sit on 66 acres between the Monte Carlo and Bellagio resorts. It will employ an estimated 12,000 people.
MGM Mirage officials have assembled a who's-who list of architects for its $5 billion CityCenter project that the company hopes not only transforms the Strip into an urban hub but sets a new international design standard.